The morning light didn't feel warm; it felt surgical. It cut through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, illuminating every speck of dust and the terrifyingly expensive grain of the marble. I sat at the dining table, my body feeling unnervingly light. For the first time in years, the screaming static in my brain was gone, replaced by a hollow, ringing silence.
Across from me, Han Jeo was a study in casual cruelty. He was draped in obsidian silk, his legs crossed, scrolling through his tablet with a bored flick of his finger. He wasn't eating. Instead, a crystal glass sat by his hand, filled with a liquid so dark it was almost black. It didn't smell like juice. It smelled like copper and old iron.
"Eat, Dumbo," he said, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to rattle the silverware. "You're staring at that plate like it's a crime scene. I pay my chef too much for you to let that omelet go cold."
I gripped the edge of the table. My knuckles were white. The silence he provided was a drug, but the price was starting to feel like my soul.
"What are you?" I asked. The words felt heavy, falling into the room like stones. "I've seen the way you move. I've seen your eyes.
No human has a heartbeat that slow... if you even have one at all."
Jeo paused. He didn't look up, but the air in the room suddenly dropped five degrees.
The playfulness vanished from his shoulders, replaced by a predatory stillness that made my lizard-brain scream to run.
He slowly set the tablet down and turned his head. His hazel eyes were gone. In their place were two pools of molten, jagged crimson, glowing with a light that didn't belong in this century.
"You already know the answer, Taeyul," he whispered, and the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. "You've felt the cold of my skin. You saw the fangs in that pathetic bar. I am a Pureblood. A 'vampire,' if you prefer the bedtime stories. I am the thing that stays awake so the world can dream."
A shiver raced down my spine, but I didn't pull away. I couldn't. "So I'm just a blood-bag? You bought me from my aunt to keep me in a cellar?"
Jeo let out a sharp, dry laugh that lacked any humor. He rose from his chair, moving with a fluid, terrifying grace, and stood over me. He leaned down, his hands slamming onto the arms of my chair, caging me in. The scent of him—cold rain and expensive mint—swamped my senses.
"I have a cellar full of blood, brat," he hissed, his face inches from mine. I could see the translucent tips of his fangs grazing his lower lip. "I don't need your veins. I need your peace. When I touch you, the two hundred years of screaming in my head stops. You aren't my food. You are my anesthesia. My sanctuary."
I looked into those red eyes, feeling the sheer weight of his age pressing against me. I didn't feel love. I didn't even feel attraction. I felt the cold, hard logic of survival.
"I'm staying," I whispered, my voice cracking. "But not for you. I'm staying because for the first time in my life, I'm not afraid to close my eyes. You're a monster, Han Jeo. But you're a monster who keeps the other shadows away."
Jeo's eyes faded back to hazel, a dark, 'slutty' smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Spoken like a true martyr. We're just two broken things using each other, then. I like that. It's honest."
He reached out, his cold fingers dragging slowly down my throat, tracing the pulse point. "Just remember, little bird... once you get used to the silence I give you, you'll find that the rest of the world is far too loud to go back to."
The heavy tension was sliced open by the sharp, rhythmic clack-clack-clack of stilettos against the marble foyer.
The elevator doors hadn't even fully closed before a voice, sharp as a diamond-tipped needle, echoed through the hall.
"Jeo-nim! I told the guards that if they touched my Chanel bag again, I'd have their hands for a necklace!"
Sera swept into the room like a cold front.
She was draped in a silver trench coat that shimmered like fish scales, her platinum hair styled into a lethal bob. She stopped mid-stride, her blue eyes—wide and artificial—locking onto the scene: Han Jeo, the untouchable god of Vogue, leaning over a boy who looked like he had been dragged out of a gutter and wrapped in Jeo's own silk.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Sera's gaze raked over Taeyul with a visceral, sickening disgust. She didn't look at him like a human; she looked at him like a cockroach found in a five-star kitchen.
"Oh... Jeo-nim," she breathed, her voice dripping with mock pity. "I heard you had picked up a new... 'hobby,' but I didn't realize you were bringing the charity work into your own bedroom. Is this a new trend? The 'homeless-chic' look?"
She walked closer, the scent of her cloying, expensive perfume invading the space. She stopped right next to Taeyul, looking down her nose at him.
"You look a bit... dusty, sweetheart," she said, her voice a poisonous purr. She reached out a gloved hand as if to flick a piece of lint off Taeyul's robe, but her eyes were twin daggers of jealousy. "Does he even speak? Or does he just sit there and look grateful for the scraps?"
Jeo straightened up, his eyes flashing red for a split second. A low, guttural growl vibrated in his chest—a sound that made the crystal glasses on the table rattle.
"Sera," Jeo said, his voice a lethal lowercase. "You are trespassing. And you are speaking to someone who belongs to me. If you value that face you've spent millions on, you'll turn around and walk back into that elevator."
Sera flinched, her composure cracking for a heartbeat, but she didn't back down. She looked at Taeyul, her smile turning into a thin, bitter line.
"Careful, little pet," she whispered, loud enough only for Taeyul to hear. "Superstars get bored of their toys very quickly. And when he's done with you, I'll make sure there isn't a gutter in Seoul deep enough for you to hide in."
She turned on her heel, her silver coat snapping like a whip. "I'll see you at the shoot, Jeo-nim. Try not to let the... smell... of the help ruin your focus."